Existing avionics systems (such as existing flight management systems) lack a method or means of efficiently modifying a vertical navigation climb rate or vertical navigation descent rate. Existing flight management systems fail to accommodate pilot needs for when a pilot must deviate from a standard climb or descent profile to avoid turbulent conditions and obstructions or to accommodate air traffic control instructions. The shortcomings of current flight management systems often result in a pilot being required to engage in a manual flight control mode or result in the pilot being required to make a series of cumbersome selections with the interface of the flight management system. Similarly, existing avionics systems lack a method or means of efficiently modifying or setting an intercept heading when off course from a flight plan.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a method, system, and apparatus configured to allow a pilot to efficiently modify a vertical navigation climb rate or a vertical navigation descent rate; similarly, it would be desirable to provide a method, system, and apparatus configured to efficiently modify or set an intercept heading when off course from a flight plan.